The Lovers (48 page)

17
.   The Afghan version mostly tracks the great twelfth-century Persian poet Nezami’s epic retelling of the original Arabian story. See “Persian Poetry: Nezami Ganjavi,” on the University of Arizona’s website at http://persianpoetry.arizona.edu.

18
.   According to Global Rights, March 2008, “Living with Violence: A National Report on Domestic Abuse in Afghanistan,” 58.8 percent of Afghan women are in forced marriages, either arranged marriages to which they objected or marriages made when they were still children. See www.globalrights.org/Library/Women%27s%20rights/Living%20with%20 Violence%20Afghan.pdf.

3: ZAKIA MAKES HER MOVE

1
.   The Afghan Constitution in English (which is the document’s mother tongue) can be found at www.afghan-web.com/politics/current_consti tution.html. In addition to guaranteeing women the right to education and a share of seats in parliament and provincial councils, Article 22 reads, “The citizens of Afghanistan—whether man or woman—have equal rights and duties before the law.”

2
.   The death penalty is applied only in adultery cases where the woman was married, but Zakia’s father later insisted that had been the case with her. In practice, death by stoning usually is not instituted by Afghan courts in adultery cases, although in many instances communities take it upon themselves to impose such punishment.

3
.   Sabira’s case is discussed in more detail beginning on p. 307.

4
.   June 20, 2015, interview with Ahmad Zia Noori, human-rights specialist for the office of the president, who cited an as-yet-unpublished survey of Afghan lawyers in Kabul Province carried out by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. Kabul would have a gener-ally much higher level of education than the country at large. The study found that 75 percent of all attorneys and prosecutors employed in the justice system—from whose ranks judges would be appointed—had neither a law-school degree nor even a degree from a shariah-law faculty.

5
.   Alissa J. Rubin,
New York Times,
Dec. 2, 2012, p. A6, “With Help, Afghan Survivor of ‘Honor Killing’ Inches Back,” www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/world/asia/doctors-and-others-buck-tradition-in-afghan-honor-attack.html.

6
.   According to the United Nations Population Fund, five thousand girls and women are killed annually in what are deemed to be honor killings, most of them in this part of the world. See UNFPA, The State of World Population 2000, p. 5, www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/swp2000_eng.pdf.

7
.   Afghanistan’s public hospitals typically expect patients to pay for supplementary food and for the cost of medications due to budgetary constraints and systematic corruption. In theory that should not happen, since the public-health sector is almost entirely financed by international aid, but corruption and waste prevent much of that financing from reaching beneficiaries.

8
.   
New York Times,
Aug. 17, 2010, p. A1, “In Bold Display, Taliban Order Stoning Deaths,” www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/world/asia/17stoning.html.

9
.   
New York Times,
Jan. 31, 2011, p. A4, “Afghan Stoning Video Rekindles Outcry,” www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/world/asia/01stoning.html.

10
.   Police acted at all only because one of the videos of the stonings was aired on national television, and then arrested only four of the leaders of the executions. “We cannot arrest the whole village,” said police chief Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili. “Just a few people in the video were Taliban; the rest of them were there by force and had to obey the Taliban.” Their apparent enthusiasm for the stoning suggested otherwise. The fact is, stonings still happen, both in areas under Taliban control and in those under government control. The main difference is that the government goes to great lengths to suppress news about stonings when its people carry them out and is happy to publicize them when the Taliban do so. Around the same time as the stoning case in Dashte Archi District, the council of Muslim religious leaders in Afghanistan, a government-financed body called the Supreme Ulema Council, petitioned the government to allow more shariah-law punishments for social crimes, including the stoning and lashing of adulterers (stoning to death if one party is married, lashing if both are single). See also Human Rights Watch, Afghanistan: “Reject Proposal to Restore Stoning.” Nov. 25, 2013
,
www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/25/afghanistanreject-proposal-restore-stoning.

11
.   Another notorious stoning case carried out by the Taliban was in Parwan Province not far from the capital of Kabul, on July 8, 2012, of a woman named Najiba, who it turned out was accused of having an affair with the Taliban shadow governor of Parwan Province. He was not punished. A video of her murder was posted at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNsjgTv-u5o
.
Many of the participants can be easily identified in the video; none were ever prosecuted, although the stoning took place in an area normally under government control.

12
.   When I visited the Bamiyan primary court a few weeks after the attack on Zakia, Judge Tamkeen would not come out of his chambers when he heard he had a foreign visitor, but one of the younger judges, Judge Rahman, spoke in his stead. The judges, Judge Rahman said, were not trying to force an adult woman to return to a family against her will but instead were simply implementing shariah law and, under Islam, judges were encouraged to work out amicable family settlements, which is all they were doing in Zakia’s case. “Islamic law permits us to find a peaceful solution,” he said. He denied that the couple’s differing sects and ethnic backgrounds ever figured into the judges’deliberations. “Shariah law does not prevent two people from different sects marrying each other,” he said. “You can even marry a Jew or a Christian. There is no legal problem.”

He also denied that Zakia’s family had threatened to kill her in the February 3 melee in court, despite what numerous other witnesses said. “This is just propaganda,” he said. “It never happened.”

13
.   Different women’s officials in Baghlan gave different ages for the girl. She herself might not have known and, like most Afghan women and girls, would not have had her own identity papers, so the officials were giving their estimates of what they thought her age to be.

14
.   
New York Times,
May 4, 2010, p. A4, “In Spite of the Law, Afghan Honor Killings of Women Continue,” www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/world/asia/in-spite-of-the-law-afghan-honor-killings-of-women-continue.html.

15
.   This is a reference to Article 398 of the Afghan Penal Code; for more on this article, see p. 90.

16
.   Mr. Faisal, the provincial councilman who brokered the agreement to return the girl, now denies he did so. He did not even know the family, he said, and was merely making a courtesy call for a militia commander from the girl’s village, who phoned and asked him for a favor, to call the women’s ministry and ask them to talk to the family.

“I wouldn’t do such a thing. I’m not even from that district,” Mr. Faisal said. “They never should have sent the girl home with the family under such circumstances.”

They never would have done so had Mr. Faisal not loaned the prestige of his name and reputation to vouch for Amina’s family, Ms. Atifi said.

“I don’t know about that,” Mr. Faisal said. “I’m really not in the picture very much.”

17
.   No charges had been brought against anyone for the murder of Amina as of July 2015, according to women’s-ministry officials in Baghlan Province, although an investigation was said to be still ongoing more than a year after her murder. Authorities said they were hampered due to insurgent activity in the area where Amina’s family lived.

18
.   Guards at the Bamiyan Women’s Shelter are actually civilian employees of the institution, men outside and women inside, not police officers.

4: A RABBI AMONG THE MULLAHS

1
.   
New York Times,
Mar. 10, 2014, p. A1, www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/world/asia/2-star-crossed-afghans-cling-to-love-even-at-risk-of-death.html.

2
.   
New York Times,
Sept. 24, 2014, p. A8, “In Farewell Speech, Karzai Calls American Mission in Afghanistan a Betrayal,” www.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/world/asia/hamid-karzai-afghanistan.html.

3
.   Fatima Kazimi’s e-mailed note, which was written in English, is reproduced verbatim.

4
.   
National Geographic,
June 1985. A discussion of that cover’s influence is in the magazine’s online edition, Oct. 2013, at http://ngm.nationalgeo graphic.com/2013/10/power-of-photography/draper-text.

Sharbat Gula’s haunting image became iconic, and in Afghanistan it was often borrowed by artists and knockoffs of it are painted and sold in galleries.

Steve McCurry later found Sharbat Gula in adulthood, hard-used by life in Afghanistan. Cathy Newman,
National Geographic,
Apr. 2002, “A Life Revealed,” http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=2015012_in vitation_ro_all#.

5
.   “In Afghanistan I could barely look at people,” writes the photographer, Lynsey Addario, in her memoir. “I had to constantly remind myself not to look men in the eye.” Lynsey Addario,
It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War,
page 40. New York: Penguin Press, 2015.

6
.   Mauricio Lima’s portrait of Zakia is in the photo insert.

7
.

8
.   
New York Times,
Mar. 31, 2014, p. A6, www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/world/asia/afghan-couple-finally-together-but-a-storybook-ending-is-far-from-assured.html.

9
.   
Slate,
Mar. 29, 2001, “Who Is Shmuley Boteach?” www.slate.com/ar ticles/arts/culturebox/2001/03/who_is_shmuley_boteach.html.

10
.   Formerly the Jewish Values Network. See the organization’s website at https://worldvalues.us/about.

11
.   Shmuley Boteach,
Guardian,
July 5, 2011, “I Saw What Tabloid Life Did to Michael Jackson,” www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/05/michael-jackson-rabbi-tabloid-life.

12
.   Shmuley Boteach,
Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy
(New York: Three Rivers Press/Crown, 2000); and
Kosher Lust: Love Is Not the Answer
(Jerusalem/New York: Gefen Publishing House, 2013).

13
.   Alissa J. Rubin,
New York Times,
June 27, 2012, p. A4, “Afghan Rape Case Turns Focus on Local Police,” www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/world/asia/afghan-rape-case-turns-focus-on-local-police.html.

14
.   Jawad Sukhanyar and Alissa J. Rubin,
New York Times,
Nov. 27, 2012, p. A10, “4 Members of Afghan Police Are Found Guilty in Rape,” www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/world/asia/afghan-militia-members-found-guilty-in-rape.html.

5: A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO HIDE